Posted: September 4th, 2022

The Benefits and Drawbacks of the use of The Onion Router

The Benefits and Drawbacks of the use of The Onion Router
Word Count 750 word /- 10%

IEEE Reference

Your task is to research, summerise and analyse the benefits and drawbacks of the continued use of the Tor Network. It is important to consider the balance between the positive and negative elements of the Tor Network and support your findings with relevant academic sources and references.

Criteria
This criterion is linked to a learning outcome Understanding
Awareness and Understanding of the Dark Web, Dark Nets and Tor
This criterion is linked to a learning outcome Technical Accuracy
Demonstratable technical understanding and accuracy
This criterion is linked to a learning outcome Research
Research and understanding of the benefits and drawbacks of dark net use
This criterion is linked to a learning outcome Presentation
Overall Presentation, Spelling and Grammar
This criterion is linked to a learning outcome Referencing
IEEE referencing from acceptable academic sources.
The Benefits and Drawbacks of the use of The Onion Router
The Onion Router, Tor, is free, open-source software developed by the US Navy to anonymously help users browse the internet. This is possible when users use the Tor network; it encrypts internet traffic by passing it through nodes, referred to as relays, before reaching the user destination’s nodes have an IP address which is encrypted only visible to the at the exit node preventing the activity from being traced back to the users IP address (Buresh, 2020). When users log into the Tor homepage, the user traffic is routed through the network; once the user terminates session in the network, the browser automatically deletes privacy-sensitive data and the user browsing history. This paper seeks to expound on the benefits and drawbacks of the continuous use of Tor.
Tor is used to protect cautious users’ privacy from bypassing censorship, protecting children’s privacy, and barring third parties from online data collection. Additionally, journalists use it to connect with sources who do not risk their identity being exposed, for the essence of political activists for fear of prosecution. Over the years, people have misused the privilege by exploiting it by accessing darknets to conduct illegal businesses. Tor has a share of its benefits but also shortcomings (Buresh, 2020).
Benefits of The Onion Router
Herein are the main benefits of using Tor; firstly, the user enjoys anonymity, Tor networks provide anonymity for users through its multiple nodes and individual data bounce, thus, making surveillance impractical. Additionally, it is impossible to tracer back the US IP address. Secondly, it is a secure network; being an open-source software hiding malware is difficult securing the network from attackers with malicious intent. Thirdly, Tor is universally accessible and free and is compatible with the leading operating systems such as Linux, pcs and Macs. Moreover, it is accessible to users in otherwise geographically restricted websites. Tor bypasses those restrictions that allow users to access geo-restricted content and come in handy for people in distress in a restricted area, thus, aids democracy (Chauhan, 2019: 2024 – Online Assignment Homework Writing Help Service By Expert Research Writers).Additionally, by circumventing censorship it allows users to access the basic internet functionality.
Furthermore, Tor protects the user’s privacy from identity thieves and unscrupulous marketers that benefit from the information obtained by the internet services from users’ browsers. They then use this information obtained illegally to develop their business and marketing models. Using the Tor network ensures that the users personally identifiable information is protected and reducing rude interruptions by adverts during browsing (Buresh, 2020). Distinctively, Tor is the only network that allows access to onion sites. While other browsers are restricted to onion sites, Tor has unrestricted access to the onion sites. Despite these sites being labeled as the dark web and mostly a channel for illegal activities, there are legal users, for essence dissidents, journalists that actively utilize the dark onion sites in their line of work (Sonntag, 2019: 2024 – Online Assignment Homework Writing Help Service By Expert Research Writers). Therefore, these freedoms facilitate easy access to those sits that are normally deemed inaccessible by other common browsers. Finally, when utilized appropriately it eliminates skirt surveillance use of Tor network is highly likely to raise red flags to the government surveillance acne during harmless browsing, therefore, to some extent it gives the use the privilege to access the sites and protects their privacy by making it difficult for observers to spot the users physical -word identity.
Drawbacks of Tor
Herein are the main drawbacks of the continuous use of Tor; firstly, slow connection; browsing through the Tor network is slower compared to open net as it takes a longer time to loads its homepages hence not an efficient performance browser; therefore, it is not suitable for users that enjoy streaming content at a much efficient manner. Moreover, being anonymous, data is not encrypted; thus, another VPN is necessary to transfer, possibly slowing the whole process (Sonntag, 2019: 2024 – Online Assignment Homework Writing Help Service By Expert Research Writers). Secondly, When not used appropriately, the safety of the network can be jeopardized whereby the final tor exit node could be exposed, making the data completely distorted; thus, data breach .another major drawback for the use of Tor network is that it allows people to access the dark web and conduct illegal such as selling illegal drugs or firearms. They enjoy the power of anonymity to remain undetected. Thirdly, it contains its security flaws; for essence, when a user views HTTP sites that are not encrypted, they are susceptible to vulnerabilities (Chauhan, 2019: 2024 – Online Assignment Homework Writing Help Service By Expert Research Writers). Another drawback of using tor is the potential to draw attention on the user, even when conducting legal internet browsing on the internet, the idea of being connected to Tor turn s the user into a target by government surveillances. With the increased illegal activities on the network, the govern has deployed many of its agencies such as FBI and NSA to devise means of tracking Tor user activities and flash out illegal users. Additionally, it is not suitable for users that enjoy streaming and downloading content, which is the most frequent activities users do when connected to a network, hence, this shortcoming is a great hindrance.
Tor is legal but its privacy does not guarantee more security. Privacy is not necessarily equivalent to security. As it is possible for the network to still suffer from cyber-attacks while using the network. however, being an open source, it amplifies its security feature making it hard to crack. the user’s browser however is susceptible to man in the middle attacks as hacker’s device new ways of to attack the browser (Buresh, 2020). On the brighter side, the browsers developers are working to improve the networks to protect its users from external attacks. It is also advisable that users regularly update their software’s to be up to date with the additional security features and keep the users safe. additionally, to ensure maximum security, user should adopt use of VPN in collaboration with the Tor networks to there that their activities are decrypted and anonymized.
Conclusion
For users that seek to hide their personally identifiable information from third parties, Tor offers the necessary anonymity. However, they are not 100 % guaranteed to anonymity as it is susceptible to traffic analysis. Still, when appropriately used, the user can achieve three levels of security from the layers of security available at the users’ disposal .additionally, it provides anonymity to use in countries where their internet is censored, offering the freedom of expression through its network by providing low latency internet anonymity and barring online surveillance efforts. Sadly, many people have misused this privilege of privacy to conduct illegal activities through the tor network bandwidth, thus, questioning its importance protection of identity, thus raising the suspicion of government agencies attracting high-level surveillance.

References

Buresh, D. L. (2020). Is the Onion Router A Secure Network? Journal of Advanced Forensic Sciences, 1(2), 1.
Chauhan, M., & Singh, A. K. (2019: 2024 – Online Assignment Homework Writing Help Service By Expert Research Writers, December). Survey of Onion Routing Approaches Advantages, Limitations and Future Scopes. In International Conference on Computer Networks, Big data and IoT (pp. 686-697). Springer, Cham.
Sonntag, M. (2019: 2024 – Online Assignment Homework Writing Help Service By Expert Research Writers). Malicious DNS Traffic in Tor: Analysis and Countermeasures. In ICISSP (pp. 536-543).

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